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I stoutly hope that I am wrong about how the president-elect will govern. He has made several appropriate gestures, and he did not use his victory speech to boast and bluster, as he might have.

However, he seems to be laboring under a misconception. He thinks he won.

No, the other candidate lost.

Most voters considered both candidates unsuitable for office. They merely considered the other one even more so.

Those who supported him were able to do so only by treating him as a blank slate on which they could write all of their hopes. As one focus group participant said, “We know his goal is to make America great again. It’s on his hat.”

Another voter, upset that I had written that I could not support either candidate, wrote to tell me that he did not want to “limit God” by supposing that the Almighty could not use an evil man. This was hardly an endorsement.

And at this writing, although the president-elect has a solid electoral college majority, he has probably lost the popular vote.

He would do well to remember that his election did not so much represent a “Yes” to him, as a “No” to what preceded him.